sense of belonging

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Over the course of my celebrated and acclaimed, feted and esteemed, renowned and honored, highly praised and widely recognized blogging career here at Plot 63P, I’ve noticed a behavioral pattern. I spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the placeholder text ‘Add title’.

What should the theme be? How does one encapsulate months of garden activities spanning multiple projects with a wide array of plantings into the most perfectly and meticulously crafted header? After heavy rumination, I finally landed on the answer; it doesn’t really matter and nobody really cares.

That said, there’s still plenty of theme baked into this post’s title. It’s now Season #3 since moving out of my downtown apartment and migrating from Buckman Elementary Community Garden to Gabriel Park Community Garden where the now beloved plot 63P resides. Over the course of the past couple years there’s been a growing sense of belonging for me in both my new homes; settling into the house and settling into plot 63P, continuing to incrementally transform each space as laid out within my mind’s eye. Even the seeds of 2025 are building out their own belonging in their final resting places.

Garden Home

This actually just clicked for me recently. I live in a district in SW Portland called Garden Home, which is extremely fitting for what Morgan and I have spent a lot of time doing lately; gardening at home. So it’s here that we start, where garden meets home and home meets garden. As you’ll discover below, our backyard is quickly rivaling plot 63P when it comes to total edible gardening square footage, so there’s even more reason to dig into what’s been going on in this world.

There’s a certain sick enjoyment I gain when teetering on the edge between sticking to what I know I’m capable of, and biting off more than I can chew. It’s a bit of a drug riding that line, what can I say. After reflecting this winter on last year’s growing season and whether I bit off more than I could chew, new thoughts began intruding into my mind – I’ve been chewing just fine, I need MORE. MORE CHEW. These recurring thoughts led to some mental gymnastics which ultimately led to a brash conclusion:

We absolutely needed more garden beds.

We needed more garden beds because … think, Aaron think.

We needed more garden beds because … we have so many mouths to feed. Nope, that doesn’t hold water.

We needed more garden beds because … we’re starting a commercial business. Blatant lie. Try again.

We needed more garden beds because … it’s fun damn it!

That’s more accurate. At least accurate enough to justify quickly breaking ground on some more sweet, sweet planting square footage before I changed my mind. Although, there was another reason that justified expansion efforts slightly more.

Don’t get me wrong. Plot 63P is a fantastic asset, but the plot has one drawback; the time & energy of commuting, which leads to less tending to than out the steps and into the backyard. This isn’t usually an issue since we live in relatively close proximity to the plot but for certain crops, mainly those that yield continuously, they’re much easier to babysit and harvest at home. At least, that is my presumption. These include crops like summer squash, indeterminant tomatoes, snap beans, etc. A big pain point of last season when growing these at plot 63P was that they grew bountifully and FAST (emphasis on FAST), resulting in zucchini discoveries that rivaled the size of a new planet, and snap beans that swelled so large and hardened so tough you could almost repurpose one into a boat to ride across the Willamette.

Hypothesis: Growing continuously yielding crops at home would allow for easier monitoring, better-timed harvesting and ultimately proper eating because if you’re picking vegetables that are long past the point of eating, what’s the point of growing them in the first place? All of this is just a long-winded way of say – more square footage was necessary for growing!

After we consulted, it was decided that the best place for new beds would be replacing some of the lawn. We don’t really use much of the lawn anyways so it was a logical choice. After watching the sun patterns, I concluded most of the sunlight shone along the outer strip of lawn near where the existing beds resided. Deciding on a location was all I needed to start putting things in motion.

Now I’ve never killed sod before, and I’ve heard horror stories of how difficult it could be, so no chances were taken. If I had anything to do with it, this sod was going to die and die quickly. The plan was to layer four materials in a ‘lasagna’-type manner to grant the grass no hope of survival; cardboard, followed by burlap sacks, followed by leveled dirt, and finally mulching with bark chips.

Ultimately, the job went really well. The newly built beds were put in front of last year’s built beds, slightly offset towards where most of the sun shines.

Note: Special shout-out to Thorton Coffee Roasters who hooked me up with their extra burlap sacks on multiple occasions I requested them and visited them for pickup (for free!).

What’s Growing in Garden Home

We’ve skipped entirely past the incubation phase where most of these plants started off under grow lights in the garage. Leapfrogging forward, let’s tap into the plants that are well on their way to adulthood in the backyard this summer growing season.

Dry Beans

Just like last year, the dry beans are getting their own dedicated bed. Wait a minute – isn’t the backyard for continuous yield crops? While dry beans don’t fit that criteria, I chose the backyard because, well, they look cool. If you managed to read about last years dry bean harvest, the bean pods give off some cool vibes. They will make a fun ornamental backdrop to the rest of the edible garden when summer is in full effect. All varieties from last year are making a comeback this year along with two additional bush bean varieties. This will be the first experience growing bush beans.

Most Anticipated Yield: Wolverine Orca bush beans

Brassicas

Ok, ok. Another bed with crops that aren’t continuous yield. Sue me. Since I spent most of spring on yard/plot improvement projects, I ran out of time to dedicate to plant experimentation. Yet, cabbages are one of the few things I’m experimenting with, leading to the reason I chose to plant them at home.

The outcome is to understand how late I can start cabbage in spring for a good harvest. Cabbages don’t do well in extreme heat, so I chose to plant them here at home where they’ll get roughly 6 hours of direct light rather than at the plot which gets a lot hotter with roughly 2-3 more hours of direct sunlight. This bed will give the cabbages and the kale much more afternoon shade here at the house. They’re are the same varieties as last year; Primax and Amarant. I’ve also snuck nasturtiums into some of the beds to attract pollinators, add pops of color and act as a trap crop for bad bugs. I see you aphids. I see you.

Most Anticipated Yield: Kale. I’ve never grown kale before!

Summer Squash

Onto the continuous yields! This season swaps out both of last season’s summer squash varieties with two new varieties that I’ve been sitting on for a couple years; a light-green french variety called Genovese and a yellow patty-pan variety called Patisson Golden Marbre. Since these did not earn garden space last season, a buddy and I seed-swapped so he could plant them and see how it went (shout out to Jonno). The verdict on the Patisson Golden Marbre arrived and he gave them two-thumbs up 👍🏼👍🏼. Interspersed between them are some simple romaines for good measure.

Most Anticipated Yield: Patisson Golden Marbre patty-pan squash. These seem fun and practical in size for regular cooking.

Pole Beans & Onions

Wrapping up the permanent bed space at the house, we’ve got pole beans and onions. Pole beans are something I’ve planted at the plot the last two years and they’ve gotten out of hand both seasons with crazy yields and rapid growth. This time, with my eagle eyes, no bean shall go unturned nor have time to camouflage itself within the foliage, bloating and toughening beyond any resemblance of an edible state.

Often I will go on the internet to research onions, and I will leave the internet more confused than when I started. That won’t stop me from trying again this season though. Brace yourselves, negativity incoming: This is the 2nd year attempting onions but I’m no closer to understanding them. My gut feeling is they will fail again. Eventually, I surmise that I’ll realize what mysterious and blatant mistake is being made worth kicking myself over later. Essentially, the glass is still half-empty on onions but I’m obviously projecting my insecurities from last year into bad juju for this year so let’s stop that now. I’m sorry 2025 onions! Don’t listen to me! The varieties planted for both the pole beans and the onions are the same as last year, with a heavier emphasis on rattlesnake pole beans (again, shoutout to Jonno for sourcing these) which were the easiest to spot on the vine for me last season.

Most Anticipated Yield: Onions of course! Who am I kidding, they won’t yield

Grow Bags

In-between the new beds is a wide-open freshly mulched area that is perfect for … grow bags! I’m most excited about this aspect of the home garden since growing in bags is brand new to me.

Arguably my most anticipated crop this season; the SWEET POTATO! For those that know me, I love sweet potatoes. In fact, Morgan’s very first experience of me was watching me meal prep mounds of sweet potatoes on our first (and only) virtual date during Covid. I’m still not sure what kind of first impression that left. Browsing seed sites this past winter I stumbled upon a local company selling sweet potato slips. As soon as I found myself aware of this knowledge, it immediately meant that I had absolutely no choice. An attempt had to at least be made growing my absolute favorite vegetable of all time. A custom soil recipe was concocted, courtesy of a YouTuber I follow talked about growing sweet potatoes. This grow bag will be tended to and watched closely.

Next up: cherry tomatoes! We’ve got 4 varieties of cherry tomatoes revving up this season, 3 of which are new. They include; Green Bumble Bee, Sunshine Cherry, Dancing with Smurfs, and the returning king of the cherry tomatoes – Sun Golds. Previous blog readers will know, Sun Golds are our favorite and have yet to be knocked off the pedestal. The other 3 varieties were chosen based entirely off what they look like. We will soon find out if their beauty only runs skin deep. I plopped little complementary pollinator plants (marigolds and alyssums) in each bag to add some flair. These shouldn’t compete with the tomatoes for nutrients much at all.

Wait, if there are only 4 tomatoes; what’s that 5th bag for? 👀 Great question. This is a late addition and seemingly random crop that was gifted to me by a neighbor with no need for it.

The little guy is called Chinese Pink Celery. I knew I had a few extra grow bags available for use, so when my neighbor offered this sucker to me I impulsively said yes. I adopted it for the same reason I planted the dry beans at home; as a prospective colorful addition to the garden. I’ve no idea its growing requirements, but it got plopped in a bag, got sprinkled with some fertilizer, got mulched, and now we’ll see if it gets goin’!

Most Anticipated Yield: Chinese Pink Celery. This may come as a shock with all the tomatoes, but I’m confident the tomatoes will perform and in many ways know what to expect. The pink celery though is a big question mark that’s piqued my curiosity.

Perennials

It wouldn’t be fair to omit a shoutout from the yard’s staple perennials. Each one is currently in different stages of its lifecycle.

This is the second season since transplanting the rhubarbs and they are both loving life. Last year they were left alone to reestablish and the waiting paid off. One of the first yields of spring, the rhubarb is already ‘over the hill’ for the season, but not before Morgan managed to harvest a few stalks to concoct rhubarb crisps with more stored in the freezer for use at an anticipated later date.

The artichoke is my wild child. One of two globe artichokes planted last spring, it’s the only one that survived, and barely so. It almost died itself from something digging at the roots, which required a lot of prop-up supports so that it wouldn’t collapse while the roots had additional time to secure themselves. After a bit of extra nurturing last season it now seems firmly established. I don’t plan on harvesting any heads this season either to allow further development. Patience is key with perennials and the lack of artichoke harvest doesn’t bother me because the heads blossom into amazing purple flowers that the bees adore.

The Famous Foursome of berries. A staple in the backyard. Maybe ‘Famous Foursome’ is a bit of a stretch since we don’t actually take care of the strawberries. They’re just unwatered ground cover. However I like even numbers so I’m including them in this ‘Famous Foursome’.

Historically, our best yields from the strawberries has basically been this:

• Check under some random leaves on a random date
• See a single random un-bird-bothered berry, maybe two if lucky
• Pick said berry (again, maybe a lucky 2nd one) and eat it outright

That’s the extend of our strawberry gardening. Morgan did transplant part of our strawberry cover in a different part of the yard so maybe next year our yield will be taken more seriously. Or maybe not.

If I had to guess, the raspberries give Morgan and I the highest dopamine rush out of all the berries because they’re first in line to hit our berry-dopamine-starved brains. Fresh raspberries, particularly concocted into compote for oatmeal is on the Mount Rushmore of breakfast staples. We love our raspberries.

Raspberries may be the early pizzaz of the party, but when the marionberries hit fashionably late, they can turn necks. Soon the raspberries become old news and marionberries, with their superior malleability in meals and tasty flavor profile shift them on top of the berry world for awhile. I’m a little bit annoyed at myself that I just used the phrase ‘flavor profile’. I am far from a connoisseur. I just like berries maaaan.

The blueberries are the blue-collar workers of the Foursome. When they ripen it’s all hands on deck. They produce heavily and we freeze most of these suckers, lasting us into autumn if we’re lucky. They freeze well, they taste good, and they’re applicable in many things. You can’t go wrong with blueberries, and that’s probably why they make the largest footprint in our yard.

Whew! We did it. That concludes the ‘Garden Home’ journey. Now we turn our attention to the notorious Plot 63P.

Plot 63P

Without further ado, I present to you what’s cooking in Plot 63P. Let’s jump in!

Finally, above you’ll notice two exposed circles of soil beneath each snap pea end of this bed. These are the cucumbers! We’ve got one english cucumber and one pickling cucumber. I was thrilled last season that so many folks liked the pickles we handed out, so they’re back for another season of growing and another season of tinkering with pickle recipes.

Garlic! I’m STOKED For the garlic. I don’t actually think I covered garlic in any previous blog post so this might come as a surprise to past readers, but back in October I planted 25 cloves split equally into 3rds with two hardneck varieties and a softneck variety. A lack of experience and staying mostly hands off hasn’t derailed them in any way as all 25 seem to be thriving. After harvesting the hardneck garlic scapes, the belief is that timing-wise we’re just a few weeks away from harvesting all the bulbs. Information floating around the interwebz indicates that garlic cures well, so we should have fresh garlic to last for quite a while (and to give away!). Added to the fact that you can’t buy hardneck garlic in grocery stores, I’m extra pumped for a long season of bad breath.

When garlic harvesting happens in early summer, this bed is one of the few that’s going to enter a 2nd phase of ‘winter’ gardening, which basically means planting crops in summer that mature in late autumn to be harvested throughout winter. Think winter brassicas like hardy cabbage varieties and brussels sprouts. Stay tuned for updates on that as I dip my toes into seasonal gardening beyond the summer season.

This is the last year you’ll see the big bed in such a decrepit state. The horseshoe is the last remaining bed to be rebuilt as it slowly deteriorates wooden slat by wooden slat. The final task assigned to the old Big Birtha Bed will be another new crop for me. Tomatillos! A red and green variety stake claim to each end, divided by the plot’s centerpiece and matriarch, the chive plant. Green salsa is on my list of experiments to make fresh, so these should help achieve that mission. aka I love tacos. The chives have already peaked (flower wise), but the buzzing insects still love visiting from time to time.

If I had to make a claim as to what represents the heart and soul of plot 63p this season, I’d say it’s the three beds and their contents pictured above. It’s also where chaos will reign. Where pounds and pounds of produce throw their weight around wherever they may.

First, we’ve got two new melons! Honeycomb melons and Tigger melons. The honeycomb was selected because I’ve never liked Honeydew melons from the grocery store, and my gut is telling me that homegrown varieties are far and away better. The Tigger melons earned their space this year simply because, well, they look cool. Time will tell if the taste matches. You may be wondering, what happened to the beloved and absolute star of last season; the Charentais Superprécoce Du Roc melon? The wealth has been spread to Morgan’s parents and to my parents, who are both growing these melons in their gardens. I hope they share 👀

The last two pictures above are the beloved winter squash, updated with a new variety to rival the berries and the tomatoes with a Fabulous Foursome of their own. After their ridiculous yields last season, the Kabosha, the Butternut and the Acorn have all earned their space in year 2. The new kid on the block, rounding out the Fab Four are … drumroll please … Spaghetti squash!

In my opinion, and if last season was any indication, the winter will be the largest endeavors of the season as my focus soon shifts to trellising and training these guys in order to avoid any ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ PTSD from last year.

A few years ago I was riding a Lime scooter downtown and passed by an outside stage of fighting luchadors. I immediately stopped to understand this setting a bit more and slowly found out I was staring into an annual Hot Sauce festival. Ever since this experience I’ve wanted to make hot sauce. It seems like almost everyone I know has attempted to make a bottle of hot sauce at some point in their lives, so why not me?

This brings me to the final entrant of the 2025 summer gardening season; the Chinese Five-Color Pepper plant. After the last couple years perusing around the community garden, I’ve seen quite a few hot peppers thriving – enough so that I’m throwing my hat into the scoville unit ring with a special grow bag edition for this pepper. Mature plants look really cool and are borderline ornamental. So one could say that this plant in full bloom would really ‘spice up’ the plot ifyouknowwhatI’msayin’.

Conclusion

A sense of belonging. That’s how I’ve been feeling lately both at the ‘Garden Home’ and in Plot 63P, as they both slowly evolve just as interests in edible gardening has evolved. I hope every plant listed above feels a sense of belonging where they’ve been planted so that we can achieve 🤘🏼 ultimate yields 🤘🏼 which will lead to 🤘🏼 ultimate blog post material 🤘🏼.

I know this post reads more like a glorified list with no amazingly weaved storyline, but I felt it required content to catch us back up to speed. Like last season, there will be more tailored, themed and poignant posts to come! There’s never a lack of topics to write about, the key is simply finding the time to write them.

Thanks for following along on this 2025 gardening season. I hope all you other planters out there are seizing your moments and creating belonging in your spaces. If not, well that’s ok too.

-AA